Grinding!
But really, though. It’s just paying attention to timing, feeling it out, and once you have it, repeating it, over, and over, and over, and over, and over again until you have it locked.
Yeah, I know.
Plinking can help, but that’s a technique in its own right- so, just the basics:
Try out part 1 of the combo (linking cr. MP to cr. MP). You have to wait until cr. MP’s animation finishes before pressing the button.
If the second hit doesn’t come out, you pressed the button too fast- you were early.
If the second hit got blocked, you pressed the button too slow- you were late.
If the second hit actually hit, you got it!
(No buffering in sight. Doesn’t this drive you nuts?)
When you can link cr. MP to cr. MP to your liking, move on to part 2.
Part 2 of the combo is the cancel (canceling cr. MP to Hadoken, or “cr. MP xx Hado”).
There’s a little lee-way when canceling, but not much (if any… OK, I lied…). Generally you want to cancel moves ASAP, which means you should treat cancels as one move. That is, every time you cancel you’re fully committing to it (since if you’re too late, the move may not come out, or it may come out late and not combo at all).
If you can, you want to scrunch up your inputs to do this. So, instead of cr. MP, d, d/f, f+punch, you can do d+MP, d/f, f+punch, or d, d/f+MP, f+punch. This’ll make the input register much faster.
So then, put together part 1 and part 2. Link cr. MP, cr. MP, but remember to tack on the cancel at the end, treat it like one move- so it’s [cr. MP], [cr. MPxxHado].
It should sound like “tap” pause “tap-tap”.
Generally, since you have to wait for the animation to finish when linking, linking is “slow”, and cancels are “fast”.
Looking at the full combo of cr. MP, cr. MP xx Hado xx FADC, cr. HP xx Shoryuken, the timing would be-
Slow - Fast-fast - slow - fast.
It’s a little more complicated than I’m describing it (Hadoken xx FADC has a certain timing to it that isn’t necessarily as fast as possible, IIRC) but that’s what makes these combos so tricky, is that you have to switch gears and change the speed of your inputs. It’s a very strange rhythm. But the rhythm itself doesn’t change! (Or at least, it shouldn’t!) So as long as you take your time to learn it, once you have it it’s there forever.
Again, it helps with the cancels to always input them as one; so you should be thinking [cr. MP], [cr. MP xx Hado xx FADC], [cr. HP xx Shoryuken].
If you have trouble canceling, just practice the cancel at first. Remember to squish those inputs (like with cr. HP xx SRK; you could do d/f+HP, d, d/f+punch, using the “323” leniency shortcut to speed up your input).
If you have trouble with putting a section together, just practice that part (like Hado xx FADC to cr. HP), and then add on the other parts as you feel confident.
Wherever the combo breaks down, just go over that particular section until you feel satisfied with it.
I strongly suggest you look into the SF4 Combotrainer for PC (you have this on PC right?)
Once you have your combo dialed in, you can hit “play” and hear what it’s supposed to be like. We’re singing along like Disney!
Actually hearing the correct timing really helps, since you don’t have to figure it out at that point- all you have to do is copy what you hear with your fingers.